How to Budget Weekly Pay

Would you like to learn how to budget weekly pay?

Some people think budgeting is a necessary evil. It can also be daunting for many people.

If you feel the same, I got good news for you. 

Budgeting doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be as painful as you might think. 

You can budget with ease by budgeting your weekly pay. 

I will share with you what I do to manage our family budget which has been working like a charm. 

You’re welcome to copy the process but it will work best if you take the idea and create your personalised budget. 

Disclaimer: I’m not a financial advisor. What I will share in this article is a combination of knowledge I learned from personal life experiences, people in my life and books I’ve read. What worked for my family is not guaranteed to work the same way in your situation. Consider reaching out to financial advisors if you need professional help with your financial situation.

DISCLOSURE: As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This post contains affiliate links which means I receive a commission at no additional cost to you if you click through and make a purchase using those links. See my full Disclaimer here.

What if I am not paid weekly?

No worries. I will show you what to do in a bit.

I’ve always been paid weekly. My husband has been paid fortnightly and monthly for the last 12 years. 

But we always budget weekly. 

Weekly budgeting has been great especially when we were paying our 5 figure credit card debt.

We have been debt free since 2014 and up to now, we still budget weekly. (I call it Weekly Cash Position). 

And that’s why I want to teach you how to budget weekly pay.

Why budget weekly?

Creating a budget and sticking to it is challenging. 

So breaking a budget down into smaller weekly increments can make the task less daunting. 

It becomes more manageable because you only have to think about 7 days at a time.  

Budgeting weekly has so many benefits. 

If you haven’t tried it, you have to try it.

I’ll tell you why.

First, it will help you stay on top of your finances because you get to review your budget more frequently. 

Reviewing your budget often will help you spot the potential financial issues you may have in real-time. 

As a result, you can make timely adjustments. It will help you ensure that you are living below your means. And that you are on track with your saving goals.

In a way, weekly budgeting forces you to intentionally look at your weekly spending. Therefore, it helps you manage your income and expenses better. 

Weekly budgeting will help you identify the areas you may need to cut back on. It will help you lower your weekly expenses and build your savings faster.

And third, a weekly budget will help you set up weekly financial goals. Because it’s such a short period it’s easy to make doable financial goals like Saving Money even if you’re on Low Income.

How to budget weekly pay

If you’re not being paid weekly, I will show you within the 6 steps below how to get your weekly amount for each category. That way you can align everything and it will be easier for you to budget weekly pay.

Step 1: Know your expenses

To budget weekly pay, start by writing down all your expenses. If you need help, go to budget categories and subcategories to find out your expenses in each category. 

You can do this in two ways.

Choice 1 is to use Free Money Trackers so you can track your income and expenses. You’ll know all your numbers at a glance. Use your spending record. If you don’t have one, you can use your bank statements to check your regular expenses.

The second option is to start tracking your expenses now and do it for about 4 weeks to get all your numbers.

Four weeks is long so alternatively, get all the information you need now with what you have. Approximate amounts will work for now. You just need numbers to work on.

Just make sure you pay attention to Step number 6. 

Step 2: Organise your expenses

After knowing your expenses the next thing to do is organise your budget categories. This is simply putting together individual expense subcategories into the same expense categories. 

You can organise your categories however you like but I will show you how I organise ours.

To make things simple our expenses have only 3 categories. There are, however, several sub-categories within each category. Find out more by reading 3 Budget Categories List: Save more money live better.

1. Savings (see notes on savings) 
2. Household expenses 
3. Daily Essentials 

I like doing it this way because, during weekly finance reviews, I only need to think of these 3 categories. So when my husband and I get paid, which happens fortnightly, it’s quicker for me to set aside money for each category. 

Note: It requires a little bit of time to set it up this way initially because you need to gather all expenses first to find out how much is needed for each category. 

Savings

NOTE: I know that savings are technically not expenses but my family values the “pay ourselves first” concept. So we treat this category as an expense, just like any other bills that we need to pay. Having this mindset helped us save regularly.

Household Expenses

NOTE: My family is debt free so I don’t have space for debts in this category. However, if you do have any type of debts, you can include them under this category or you can create a separate category for debt repayments.  

• Rent 
• Household Insurance (life and health insurance)
• Education (school fees, extracurricular activities and any expense related to any type of learning formal or informal)
• All Household Utilities (water, electricity, gas, internet and phone)
• Household repairs and maintenance costs
• Appliances replacement
• Special occasions and gifting (birthdays, anniversaries, and holiday celebrations including presents)
• Transportation (car insurance, car maintenance cost, car registration, and tickets for public transport)

Daily Essentials

These subcategories can be categorised as household expenses but I like to have them separate. Because these are more flexible and I can easily play around with these numbers every week. 

It’s also more controllable. Let’s take groceries for example. If this week’s grocery is high then we can set a goal to lower it next week. 

• Groceries 
• Household essentials – (personal hygiene products and household cleaning supplies)
• Dining out
• Entertainment
• Events and fun activities
• Nice to have personal items

Step 3: Break down your expenses

Now that you have all your expenses recorded and organised, you’re now ready to align all your bills’ amounts.

You’ll do this by breaking down your expenses into either weekly or daily frequency. 

NOTE: You don’t have to change the actual due dates of the bills you pay. 

So if you pay your rent monthly for example and you pay your car insurance fortnightly, you don’t have to ask your providers to change the due dates to weekly. 

Some people call providers to adjust due dates. But I couldn’t be bothered calling all my providers when we did our weekly budget for the first time. Besides, I wasn’t even sure that all of them would allow me. 

My solution then was to align everything by breaking down the amounts into smaller chunks. I turned them into daily and weekly amounts. 

This is the key to make Weekly Budgeting works for you whether you’re paid weekly, fortnightly or monthly. 

It simply means you’re breaking down your bills into smaller chunks (daily or weekly) and then setting them aside. You’re still bills by the actual due dates.

Go to the section of this post that says How to break down your expenses and I will show you exactly how to do this. (Just after Step #6).

Step 4: Set aside your expenses

By now your expenses are categorised, organised and broken down.

You know now how much you need to set aside for each category every week.

The next step is to set up different accounts. One account per category.

Alternatively, you can have just one account for all your money but set up sub-accounts for your budget subcategories. 

In Australia, banks allow us to have multiple sub-accounts. 

If you can’t have multiple accounts or sub-accounts, keep your money in one account. Keep a tracker so that you won’t get all the subcategories mixed up and end up over spending.

Doing this will not only help you avoid overspending but it will also make sure you have money ready when your bills come.

Step 5: Get organised for your payday

You now know your expenses. Budget categories and subcategories have been organised. You’ve worked out how much money you need to set aside weekly.

Next is to get organised for your payday. 

You can do this by setting up a system that works for you.

The goal is to set aside the weekly amount for each category.

This is my system’s flow. 

1. Money comes in from salaries.
2. I then transfer the weekly amount for each expense category. This takes only a few minutes every payday since I already know how much I need for each expense category. 
3. Do weekly review 

At the end of each week, if there’s money left over, I got two choices. 

1. I deposit the leftover money into Savings Account to speed up saving.
2. Or I can transfer it to another account we call Money Park. This is where we keep leftover money or any bonus money such as overtime pay or surprise savings.

Money Park’s money builds up. During tough weeks we borrow money from this account (like surprise expenses or when we’re short for the week)

Key information: 

Savings: 

It’s topped up every payday until a savings goal is completed. 

Household Expenses: 

Transfer each payday is non-negotiable and we don’t touch this until needed. So, when a bill arrives, the money and I pay it immediately.

Daily Essentials: 

This is the most flexible expense among the 3 expense categories. We use this to pay for what we need for the week. When money is low we declare lean days. (no spend days). 

Note: 

If you have debts other than a mortgage, you can either include debt repayments under household expenses or create a separate category. 

Step 6: Do a weekly finance review

Review, reassess and adjust 

Commit that every week, you’ll have a look at your finances and identify what needs to be adjusted. 

Is your savings going up or not? 

How’s your household expenses category? Was the amount you have set aside enough? 

Daily expenses are the most flexible expenses and it’s where you can exercise the power to cut back if needed. 

Think of your grocery budget. You can dramatically bring the grocery cost if you pay a little bit more time and attention to this. 

Note: If you’re paying debt, please make it a priority to pay your debt as fast as you can. 

The quicker you pay off your loans, the quicker you’ll experience financial freedom. And the more money you can set aside for something else. 

You can easily incorporate this when you do your Weekly Review. Read 7 Steps Weekly Planning Process if you need help with weekly planning.

Blog Post you may also like:

How to be intentional using the Bullet Journal Method.

How to break down your expenses

You need to calculate the weekly amount for two reasons. One, so you’ll to know how much you need to set aside every week. Two, so you can pay your bills on time. 

Remember, you’re not changing the actual due dates of your bills. You’re just finding the amount you need to set aside every week. 

Let me show you a few examples. 

How to change monthly amount to a weekly amount

If you pay your bill monthly. You can set a weekly amount to set aside by following the steps. 

Example: Rent which you pay monthly 

Due date: Every 20th of the month

Amount: $1700

There are 2 ways you can do this. (Note: when checking the total yearly amount, it will be slightly different for each method, because of the rounding) 

Method 1 is good if you just want to know the weekly amount. 

The second method is useful if you like to know the daily amount as well.

METHOD 1: Calculate the weekly amount 

1. Multiply the rent amount by the number of months in a year 

            $1700 x 12 = $20400 (total bill for the year) 

1. Divide the yearly bill by the total number of weeks in a year. 

$20400 / 52 = $392.31 weekly amount

    The weekly amount you need to set aside each week to pay your monthly rent is: $392.31. 

      To check: $392.31 x 52 = $20,400.12 

METHOD 2: Calculate the daily amount 

Use this method if you’d rather set aside a daily amount and be more micro with your budgeting. 

1. Multiply the rent amount by the number of months in a year. 

$1700 x 12 = $20,400 (total yearly rent) 

1. Divide the yearly amount by the number of days. 

$20,400 / 366 = $55.74 (daily amount) 

      To check: $55.74 x 366 = $20,400.84

To summarise: 

You can either set aside: $392.31 every week or $55.74 every day to pay your monthly rent bill of $1700. 

Note: I always set aside a little more to build a nice buffer. 

How to change fortnightly amount to weekly amount

In Australia some bills are set to be paid fortnightly or every 14 days. Here’s how you can break down a fortnightly amount to a weekly amount. 

Example: Car insurance which you pay a fortnight.

Due date: Every 14 days

Amount: $33 every fortnight 

1. There are 26 fortnights in one year. So, multiply the fortnightly amount ($33.00) by 26 to get yearly amount.

$33.00 x 26 = $858 yearly car insurance

2. There are approximately 52 weeks in one year. So you need to divide the yearly amount by the number of weeks to get the weekly amount. 

$858 / 52 = $16.50 weekly car insurance

The weekly amount for your car insurance is $16.50 

To check: $16.50 x 52 = $858 ( yearly car insurance). Or $858 / 26 = $33 per fortnight. 

Related Posts:

• Budget Categories and Subcategories you need to get on top of your finances
• Save more money and live better with the help of 3 Budget Categories List
• Get the 50 ways (with examples) on How to Save Money on Low Income
• Do financial review every week. Start with the 7 Steps to Plan your Week.
• You can also go straight to the Blog for more helpful blog posts.

Conclusion

I hope you find this blog post helpful. 

I am excited about the money goals you will achieve by setting your weekly budget. 

Most importantly, I hope you decide to take action and then start taking your steps toward Money Mindfulness. 

Start with Money Mindfulness here. Then Develop a Positive Money Mindset.

You can then start creating your Personal Financial Plan using this Planner which is on a special price for my readers.

You can get it for $11.90 instead of $17 USD. Discount code: PFPLAN2022. It’s undated so you can use it as many times as you need (personal use only)

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